‘No, her corsets are loose, so that’s all right.’
‘I’ll sit up with her,’ said Mrs Mullen. ‘I’ll just go and settle them next door, and I’ll come back. She’d better not be left, had she?’
Rodney turned from washing his hands and picked up the towel and dried them carefully.
‘No, she can’t be left,’ he said; ‘but I’ll be staying, Mrs Mullen.’
For a moment she looked her surprise.
Then: ‘Very well, Doctor,’ she said. ‘I’ll get you some wood to keep this fire going.’
It was none of her business. She had heard rumours, which she hadn’t believed for a minute; but now…well, he was a fine chap. But he was married and Kate was a Catholic, and these things didn’t ought to be. Still, she had a family of her own, and God knew what some of them would come to. Look at her Michael, for instance, going after Betty Farrow, and her a rank Nonconformist. You see, you couldn’t tell what’d befall your bairns. And with Kate being so bonny and that, it was harder for her. Well, she’d keep her mouth shut. Nobody would know owt from her…
‘I’ll bring you up a bite to eat, later on,’ she said, and went out.
It was close on two o’clock when Rodney heard the carol singers. At first their voices were distant and thin. They were some streets away, he thought, and he hoped they would come no nearer and disturb Kate.
She was sleeping peacefully, after having had a light draught, and the deathly pallor had gone from her face. He felt he had been sitting there for an eternity; he felt no weariness nor any discomfort from the straight-backed chair. Had the choice lain with him of being whisked away to any place on earth at that moment, he would have elected to stay exactly where he was.
The room had changed since he had last seen it; the floor was now covered with linoleum, a chintz frill camouflaged the wash-hand stand, and a number of books stood upon a chest of drawers. These additions, together with the innovation of a gas mantle, had transformed the appearance of the room from that of stark poverty, which he remembered, and gave it an air of homeliness.
Kate had neither spoken to him nor looked at him, but he knew she was aware of his presence. He sat close to the bed, feeling more at peace than he had been for years.
The carol singers, suddenly giving voice a few doors away, made him start. Strong male and female voices rose to the heavens, crying:
‘God rest you merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay…’
He clicked his tongue with impatience, and was about to rise when Kate said, in a small voice, ‘It’s all right; I like to hear them.’
‘I thought you were still sleeping,’ Rodney said softly. ‘Kate, look at me. How are you feeling?’
She opened her eyes slowly and looked up at him, as he bent above her, and her answer surprised him.
‘At peace,’ she said.
They stared at each other, in silence. Then she murmured, ‘Do you believe in prayers being answered?’
Before Rodney could reply, she went on, ‘No, you don’t. You don’t believe in God, do you?’
‘Don’t talk, my dear,’ he said soothingly, his fingers on her pulse.
‘I must talk. Don’t stop me. If I don’t speak now, I never shall…Rodney,’ she whispered his name for the first time.
He caught her hand and carried the palm to his mouth.
‘Oh, my love!’
‘I prayed to see you before you went to France, and my prayers have been answered.’
‘Beloved!’
The dropping of her defences was so unexpected that he felt light-headed. He sat down and pulled his chair nearer to her, and traced his lips over her fingers: ‘Oh, Kate!’
‘Nothing can be changed,’ she whispered, ‘only I wanted you to know before you went that I…I…’
‘Say it, my darling.’
He remained still, her hand pressed to his mouth, waiting.
‘I love you.’
Making a little sound like a sigh he laid his face on the pillow beside hers. His cheek couldn’t touch her because of the padding around her neck. But she turned her head slightly, and they lay looking at each other in silence.
When she would have spoken he put his fingers on her lips: ‘Not now, my beloved. Not now. Go to sleep.’
He gently stroked her hair, and the delight of touching it was overwhelming. ‘You can talk tomorrow, and tell me all the things I long to hear…It’s all right,’ he assured her as a flicker of apprehension came into her eyes, ‘nothing is changed; I know that…Sufficient to hear you say you love me. Sufficient for life, my dear.’
As she dropped off to sleep again, he thought of the strangeness of the past twelve hours; most of all, that she had to be beaten almost to death for her prayers to be answered, and that through her suffering he had been saved from himself.
8
France
‘No, Annie; you’re not going. And don’t ask again.’
Kate went on kneading lumps of dough into loaves and putting them into tins.
‘There’s hardly any coal left, Kate. And Rosie and Florrie and Jimmy got a sackful of lovely cinders yesterday, nearly six bucketfuls…’
‘I’ve told you you’re not going!’ Kate turned sharply on Annie as the back door opened. ‘And don’t ask again.’
‘And why not, may I ask?’ queried Mrs Mullen, coming in. ‘It’s going to do her no harm, Kate, going getting a few cinders.’
Kate sighed. ‘She’s not going, Mrs Mullen.’
“Tisn’t any disgrace, Kate. They like it; it’s a sort of game to them. And when they sit round the fire at night, it’s their fire.’
‘It’s no use talking…she’s not going.’
‘You make me sick, Kate, so you do. You can’t bring her up in cotton wool, not round these doors, you can’t…And you can’t burn the candle at both ends, either.’
Kate gave her a sharp glance.
‘Ah!’ went on Mrs Mullen; ‘thinks nobody knows; but you can’t sneak out of the house at midnight and come back in the small hours of the mornin’, without anybody hearing you. You weren’t back at three this mornin’, for I listened for you…Now, don’t you think it’s better to let the child go and pick in the daylight than you sit on the tip among a lot of men in the dead of night?’
Kate arranged the loaf tins along the fender and covered them with a cloth.
‘They are mostly women who are there, the few men are old,’ she said.
‘It’s a disgrace that you should go at all,’ said Mrs Mullen.
‘But not that Annie should go?’ questioned Kate sharply.
‘No, that’s different; she’s only a bairn. Anyway, why doesn’t that big lazy hulk do some picking? He’s not working half his time. What’s up with him?’ Mrs Mullen felt she knew, without asking, what was up with Tim Hannigan. He was puzzled, as she was herself. He, of course, would know about Kate and the doctor being thick, and wondered why, consequently, money wasn’t more plentiful. She wondered herself. She couldn’t, somehow, understand it. It was usual to be in funds, under the circumstances, but Kate certainly wasn’t. Hannigan, she thought, was suspecting Kate of withholding her money from the house, and was playing up, making his bad leg an excuse for staying off work.
‘Leave the house without a fire for a few days, he’ll soon get a sack on his back then,’ she finished.
‘There’s my mother’s fire to be kept going, and bread to bake, and food to cook. I’d rather freeze than ask him…you know that.’
‘Aye, lass, I know,’ said Mrs Mullen flatly. She patted Kate’s arm. ‘It’s a hell of a life…What makes me mad,’ she suddenly started, ‘is that lot o’er there,’ she indicated the houses opposite, ‘getting pit coal for practically nowt and selling it for tuppence and tuppence ha’penny a pail, and not a roundie in it. The lot I got yesterday was all slack. Daylight robbers!’
Three faces suddenly appeared at the kitchen window.
‘Is Annie coming?’
Mr
s Mullen opened the door: ‘No, she’s not. Get yerselves away.’
‘Aw…w!’ They stood, shapeless bundles of old coats and scarves, each carrying a bucket and a raker, and Rosie with an empty sack slung over her back. ‘Aw…w! Why not?’
‘She’s got chilblains,’ said Mrs Mullen. ‘Off you go now, and get a nice lot. And if we get a good fire going we’ll have panhacklety tonight and ask Santa Claus to come and have a tuck in.’
‘Ooh! Panhacklety and Santa Claus!’ the younger ones cried, banging their buckets together.
They went off down the yard, yelling, ‘At the cross, at the cross, where the Kaiser lost his horse and the eagle on his hat flew away…’ But Rosie followed more slowly, turning to the window to look at Annie, standing wistfully there.
‘You’re a fool, you know, but I suppose you know your own business best.’
Mrs Mullen opened the stair door: ‘Anything you want taking up?’ she asked.
‘No thanks,’ said Kate. ‘She’s had her wash and her breakfast. And, Mrs Mullen…you won’t mention the tip?’
‘Now what d’you take me for, a numbskull?’ Mrs Mullen gave a toss of her head and went upstairs.
Kate turned to Annie: ‘Look out and see if the postman’s coming,’ she said, glancing at the clock.
It was a quarter to ten. Surely he hadn’t been…He’d be late, it was Christmas Eve. Oh, there must be a letter this morning; he couldn’t have gone to France without letting her know…if he were still in England, he would have written…Over a week now and no letter; when every other day had brought a letter from him. What was wrong?
Annie returned: ‘I can’t see him, Kate…Do you want me to go any messages?’ she asked.
‘Yes, you’d better go and get some things.’ Kate sat down and wrote out a list of groceries, pausing as she did so to consider whether the money would run to all she was putting down. She thought of the case of groceries which had come every Christmas from the Tolmaches and she experienced again that deep sense of personal loss for the very dear people who had provided them. It seemed impossible to believe that she would visit the house in Westoe no more, that the three people who had given her new life now lay, side by side, in the earth.
The brother and sister had seemed to wither away after Rex had died and Kate had left them. They had died in the previous summer within a month of each other, Bernard going first. In his will Bernard had left Kate twenty-five pounds of the hundred which was the total amount of his estate beside his books. Their generosity had amazed Kate afresh when she had learned that they had been living on annuities, not over-large for their wants, either. Yet there had always been an outfit every year from Miss Tolmache, and clothes for Annie, expensive books from Mr Bernard, and sly boxes of chocolates and a pound or two from Mr Rex. Oh, Kate thought, were there ever such people born, as they!
She remembered her last talk with Mr Bernard: ‘Take happiness, Kate,’ he had said, holding her hands. ‘It’s all that matters. To be happy and to make another supremely so is the reason for being. In all my life of thinking and pondering I have come to know this as an essential truth. I learned it a little late, more’s the pity, but you, Kate, you can build your life on it…’
She wondered if he had known. She thought he had…dear, beloved Mr Bernard.
‘Will I get the taties from the shop, Kate, or will I fetch them from the docks?’
‘Potatoes, Annie!’
‘Potatoes…I’m sorry, I forgot.’
‘Get them from the shop; they are too heavy to carry from the docks. Here’s the list, and that’s a ha’penny for your tram back. And don’t stop if a man should speak to you, unless you know him; you understand?’
‘Yes, Kate.’
‘Go on then.’
‘Here’s the postie, Kate,’ Annie called from the front door…‘Postman, I mean,’ she added.
‘All right, dear, I’m coming. Go along.’
Kate waited tensely at the door for the postman’s approach.
‘Two for you,’ he said, as he put them into her hand.
She looked down at their open flaps…Christmas cards!
‘Oh, Rodney, what is it? What’s happened?…The anxiety was like a heavy weight bearing her down.
She returned to the kitchen and stood looking round her; the feeling of being hemmed in, chained for life within these four walls, returned. That was how she had felt when she had first left the Tolmaches, but Rodney, from last Christmas Eve, had lifted her spiritually out of this house and these streets.
The sufferings she had experienced that night had almost broken her spirit. The humiliation of cowering under the merciless flailing of the belt had affected her more than the physical pain, bringing with it a desire for death…And then he had come. From the moment he entered the room she knew that he alone could give her the desire to live, and she would fight against him no more.
After a week he had gone, leaving her still in bed, dazed with a strange happiness that demanded nothing but the knowledge that they loved each other. And then his letters had come, sometimes every day, at least every other day. They were like beams of clear light shining through the muck of her surroundings.
Only once had they met since…a few stolen hours taken from a broken journey when on his way to a remote corner of Scotland. He had wired her to meet him in Newcastle, and they had sat for most of the time in a restaurant, strangely tongue-tied, offering each other food which they neither wanted nor could eat. Her love on that day, as now, was no dazed thing, content with words as it had been earlier in the year. Her body had cried out to give him all that she knew he desired but for which he would never now ask. His love had taken on a tender quality that seemed foreign to the desire that emanated from him. It puzzled her and made her impatient. If only he would take her by force, would give her no time to be afraid or to reason, no time to think of the future, the time that would come for looking back, and around her at the living consequence of their union…this was what she dreaded, another child, who would perhaps say to her, as Annie had said, ‘They said I hadn’t a da.’ Later, Annie might forgive her for having, in the ignorance of youth, created her, but would be ashamed of her for having knowingly created another…Her mind had repeated, ‘She’s right,’ but her heart had cried, ‘Nothing matters.’
Mrs Mullen came down the stairs and into the kitchen, breaking in on her thoughts.
‘She’s a bit brighter this morning, Kate.’
‘Yes, she seems to have had a good night.’
Kate changed the loaf tins around on the fender.
‘Well, I suppose I’ll have to go and make a start,’ Mrs Mullen sighed. ‘It isn’t a bit like Christmas this year. I’ve no heart to do anything. What with the war and our Michael I don’t know where I am…I just can’t get over him. He’s never missed mass or benediction for years until lately. Our Peter used to scoff him and say he should be a priest, and now he wants to marry a Nonconformist.’
‘She’s a nice girl,’ said Kate. ‘I can quite understand him wanting to marry her.’
‘There are plenty of nice Catholic girls, and you know, Kate, there’s no good ever comes of a mixed marriage.’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Kate sharply. ‘I suppose it is better if they are both of the same religion, but if they love each other that’s all that matters.’
‘Love! Kate, you talk like a child.’ Mrs Mullen was scornful. ‘I’m surprised at you. When you start getting bairns around your feet there’s not much time for love. It’s quite hard enough when you’re both of the same creed; but what’s going to happen when he wants them to go to mass and she’s bent on sending them to chapel?’
‘If they care for each other they’ll work that out.’
‘I wish Father O’Malley thought like that.’
‘Oh, Father O’Malley!’ said Kate bitterly. ‘He’ll do more harm than good…Father O’Malley!’
‘Aye, I’ve thought that meself, but I daren’t say it. It was like hell let loo
se when he collared our Michael last week. Mike hadn’t been to mass and had been keeping out of his way, and there he was, waiting for him when he came in to tea…The things he said! But it only seemed to make Michael worse. And then later his da started on him…’
‘But why?’ put in Kate. ‘Neither you nor Mr Mullen go to mass, do you?’
‘No. But we’ve always seen to it that the bairns go.’
‘But why should you make them do something that you don’t do yourselves, because you either can’t be bothered or you no longer believe in it? If you went with them it would be different, and then Mr Mullen might be justified in going for Michael…Oh, what’s the good of talking?’ Kate ended.
‘Aye…what’s the good of talking? You’re a new generation, and you’ve got new ideas. You’re cleverer than us, you can talk it out…but still, in the long run, I can’t see it’s making you any happier. Well, I’ll get away in,’ she added. ‘And by the way’ - she turned from the door - ‘don’t you think it’s time you got out for a blow? It’s weeks since you’ve been across the doors…except at night,’ she added slyly. ‘If you feel like taking Annie around the shops this afternoon I’ll pop in and see to Sarah.’
Kate smiled. ‘Thanks, Mrs Mullen, it’s very good of you. I’ll see and let you know.’
Left alone, she thought: I can’t go before four o’clock. I must see if there’s a letter then…Could anything have happened to him? She wouldn’t know if there had…she wouldn’t hear of it until everyone else did.
She took his last letter from inside her blouse, where it lay close to her flesh, pricking her with each movement, a constant reminder of him. Sitting by the fire, she read it again, and it brought him near, into the room…
Beloved,
Let me kiss you. There! I feel better. I am sitting looking at you; your eyes are deep blue pools and they are playing their old tricks on me…My darling, it seems years since I really looked into them, but I have hopes that it won’t be long now. Things are moving at last. In what direction I can’t say, but undoubtedly they are moving; and not before time.
Kate Hannigan Page 16